


What Almost Was

by drivingmishcrazy



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Loss, Miscarriage, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:54:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23165824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drivingmishcrazy/pseuds/drivingmishcrazy
Summary: Set after the events of 7x01 and tangentially related to my other work “Moonlight”.Emily came back from the dead and left Derek reeling, their relationship in shambles. But Emily has a secret she’s not telling him. Can their relationship ever recover?
Relationships: Derek Morgan/Emily Prentiss
Kudos: 38





	What Almost Was

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: mentions of miscarriage, pregnancy loss and possible infertility.
> 
> This work is tangentially related to my other fic “Moonlight” but isn’t a sequel in the strictest sense of the word. You don’t have to have read it to read this, though reading it may give you insight into where they are as a couple.
> 
> As always, thanks to Isabel for letting me scream to her on Twitter while writing.

_ “I’m so sorry.” _

Derek Morgan was tired of hearing those words. He had forgiven Emily the moment she walked into the conference room, though there was a part of him that couldn’t quite forgive her enough to make him want to resume their relationship yet, despite having shared a bed with Emily Prentiss for three years, and knowing the most intimate details about her, like the little freckle right next to her bellybutton, or the fact that when she was extra tired, she mumbled in her sleep. Despite the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of the engagement ring gathering dust in his safe, where he had put it when he bought it, right before everything with Ian Doyle had started. In spite of Emily being the love of his life, Derek Morgan couldn’t bring himself to let her back in fully. It didn’t help that he could feel that Emily was still hiding something from him, from the team. There was still something that she didn’t dare speak of, which made anger flare in Derek’s chest. It all came out one afternoon after a less than productive practice day at the shooting range.

“Come on, Prentiss.” Derek said. “That’s sloppy! You were always one of the best shots on the team!”

“I’m having an off day.” Emily grumbled. “Aren’t I allowed to have one off day?”

“An off day could get you or a coworker killed.”

“Oh gee.” She snapped. “You don’t think I know that?”

Derek cursed. “I didn’t mean it like that!” He said. “Em, Emily come on! What’s really going on?”

“I told you.” She said. “An off day.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” He hissed. “Emily, no offense, but ever since you got back, it’s felt like there’s something that you’re not telling me. Now up until Doyle, you told me everything. Did I fail you  _ that  _ badly that you can’t talk to me anymore?”

“It’s not that.” Emily said, not looking at him. “It’s not that at all, Derek. I trust you more than I trust anyone.”

“Then what are you not telling me?” Derek said. “Why do you feel like you  _ can’t  _ tell me?”

“I’m trying to  _ spare  _ you!” Emily said. “You ever think of that? That maybe I love you  _ too  _ much to let you feel this kind of heartbreak?”

“What heartbreak?” He asked. “Prentiss, you’re not even making  _ sense  _ anymore!”

“You wanna know?” Emily said. “Fine. Remember the night in the warehouse?”

“The night you died?” Derek snorted. “Yeah, kind of hard to forget that one. I lost the love of my life that night, Emily! Of  _ course  _ I remember it!”

“I was pregnant.” She said quietly. Derek froze.

“You- you were pregnant?” He repeated. “With- with mine? It was mine?”

“Of course it was yours.” Emily said. “Who else’s would it have been, Morgan? You  _ know _ it was only you.”

He swallowed hard. “What happened? To the, uh-“

Derek stopped and his eyes landed on Emily’s stomach. She looked exactly the same yet completely different with that knowledge, and Derek couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact that just months ago,  _ his  _ baby had been in there.

“When I was stable and able to stay conscious long enough to pay attention, they told me.” Emily explained. “Well, actually they asked me if I had been  _ aware  _ that I was pregnant. I said no and asked what they meant that I  _ was  _ pregnant, and they said while I was technically still pregnant, the trauma had been so bad that they expected my body to not be able to handle the pregnancy for much longer.”

Derek nodded slowly, feeling numb. Emily had been pregnant with his baby, at some point he and this beautiful woman had conceived a child together, and Emily had had to face it alone when she lost that child.

“He held on for  _ days,  _ Derek.” Emily’s voice broke. “I mean, I don’t know if he was a boy, it was too early to tell, but he  _ held on  _ for days and then I had to watch the ultrasound when they could no longer find his heartbeat and then I had to miscarry him.”

“Emily…”

“There wasn’t even anything-!” Emily said. “Then I had to hop on a plane to Paris pretending everything was fine while I was still bleeding, Derek.”

“How far were you?” Derek asked. “When you-?”

“Thirteen weeks.” Emily said. “By the time he was gone.”

“Wow.” Derek said. “That’s...I don’t know what to say, Emily, except I am  _ so  _ sorry I wasn’t there.”

“You would have been if you’d known.” She said. “I know you, you would have been holding my hand and hoping for a miracle when we both knew we weren’t getting one. It was  _ my  _ choices that led to me doing it alone!”

“Emily, come on.” Derek said. “You didn’t have a choice.”

“I could have tried harder!” She said. “I could have fought harder to tell you guys I was safe. But I just went along with it and I deserved what I got.”

“No.” He said, eyes turning hard as steel. “Don’t you  _ ever  _ say that, Emily. You lost a child!”

“A child I was too scared to acknowledge!” Emily said, choking on tears. “I knew something was wrong, Derek, I was just too scared to take a test because I couldn’t handle being pregnant with a baby I wanted desperately on top of everything else going on!”

“You-“ Derek stammered. “You wanted-? You never told me that you wanted to start a family, Emily.”

“I didn’t wanna freak you out.” She said. “And it never seemed like the right time to bring it up, then suddenly I  _ was  _ pregnant and then just as quickly, thanks to the decision  _ I  _ made to face Doyle alone, I wasn’t anymore. Now I have to live with that for the rest of my life…”

“Emily, don’t.” He said. “You didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She said. “Because of me, our baby is dead! If things had been different he’d be  _ here _ already! We’d be changing  _ diapers,  _ not having this discussion! How do I live with that?”

“Emily, listen to me.” Derek said, pulling her into a tight hug. “I  _ know  _ you, Emily Prentiss, and I  _ know _ that you would  _ never  _ have purposely endangered our unborn child like that. The only person to blame for this is Doyle.  _ He’s  _ the one who did this to you,  _ he’s  _ the reason that baby isn’t here with us. Not you, Emily.”

“I miss it.” She said. “How do you miss someone that you never even met?”

“I don’t know, princess.” He sighed. “I don’t know.”

Derek held Emily close that night, not wanting to leave her side. He hadn’t been able to be there when she had lost their baby, but damn sure he was going to be there for her now. Something shifted, and Derek found that he wasn’t angry anymore, he was just heartbroken. Emily had been prepared to suffer in silence to protect him from the pain that she had felt for the last eight months. This woman who he had spent the last month being so angry at had been thinking of him when  _ she  _ was suffering. It was clear that whatever had happened, she still loved him.

And he still loved her.  _ So  _ much.

“I was going to ask you to marry me.” He said later, curled up in bed next to her, Emily’s head was on his chest and she was listening to his heartbeat.

“You were?”

“Yeah, I was.” Derek said. “I even got the ring, I was just waiting for the right time to ask you.”

“And then Doyle happened.” Emily sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He said, kissing her forehead. “I love you, and I don’t know where we go from here, but I need you to know that. I never stopped loving you, Emily.”

“I never stopped loving you either.” Emily said. “For seven months, all I could think about was you. I missed you so much, Derek. So much.”

“I missed you too.” He said. “Emily, do you  _ want  _ to have a baby?”

Emily shook her head. “Everything is too complicated right now.” She said. “I don’t even know where we stand with us, how could we bring a child into that?”

“Well,” He said. “Do you wanna work on figuring that out? Us?”

“Of course I do.” She said. “I didn’t think that  _ you  _ did.”

“I won’t lie to you, Emily.” He said. “I spent a long time being angry. I was hurt. But  _ no one  _ has  _ ever  _ made me feel the way that you make me feel. I’m not ready to let that go, are you?”

“No.” She said. “I’ll never be ready.”

That night was a turning point for both of them. The love was still there, had always  _ been  _ there, and now they were both committed to fixing the breach that had occurred between them. At Derek’s request, they started seeing a couples therapist and slowly they began to work out the issues that the situation with Doyle and the loss of their child had created. Little by little they began to mend, until the hostage situation at the bank with Izzy Rogers, until Clyde Easter came to her with an offer to run the London office of Interpol. He didn’t want to say anything at JJ’s wedding, the last place that they should be fighting, but he knew.

She wanted to leave. And when they got home that night, it all came out.

“Why do you wanna  _ leave  _ me, Emily?” Derek said, nearly shouted. “After  _ everything  _ we’ve been through!”

“I don’t want to leave you, Derek!” Emily said. “I just can’t stay  _ here  _ anymore!”

“So quit the BAU if you have to!” Derek said. “Give it all up to become a farmer or something, just don’t go where I can’t follow, Em! I  _ love  _ you!”

“I love you too!” She said. “And I would  _ never  _ ask you to give up your whole life to follow me to London.”

Something in Derek’s heart seemed to snap at her words. He stared at her, stunned.

“So that’s it, then?” He asked. “It’s over, just like that?”

“You can’t leave and I can’t stay.” She said. “I don’t want it to be over, but I don’t see any other way.”

“Don’t do this.” He said. “Don’t shut me out and push me away after we worked so hard to get back to where we are. What’s the matter with you?”

“Did we though?” She asked. “Can we ever  _ really  _ get back to where we were before all this?”

“Not if you keep running away!” Derek said. “What is it that you’re so afraid of, anyway?”

“I can’t-“ Emily faltered. “I can’t give you what you want. I’m too damaged, too broken.”

“Emily, we talked about this.” Derek said. “I want  _ you,  _ in all of your damaged glory. Every little broken piece of you.  _ You’re  _ who I love, Emily. I don’t want anybody else.”

“What if you change your mind?” She asked. “We don’t even know if I can still  _ have  _ children after what happened, and don’t tell me that it doesn’t matter to you, because I know it does.”

“So we’ll figure it out, Emily!” He said. “We could get a surrogate, or adopt. You always said that you wanted to adopt anyway!”

“But you want a biological child.” Emily said. “I can see it in your eyes every time you talk about it.”

“Okay fine.” Derek said. “Would I love to watch you carry and give birth to our child? Would I love to look at that baby and see both of us in them? Yes.”

“See?” Emily said. Her eyes filled with tears. “And I don’t know that I can give that to you.”

“But I love you more.” He said. Derek sighed. “I didn’t want to do it like this, Emily.”

“Do what?”

“I love you.” He said, grabbing her hands. “I wanna spend the rest of my  _ life  _ with you. I had this all planned out, but I feel like I’m losing you right before my eyes and I can’t wait anymore.”

“You’re asking me to marry you?” Emily said. “In the middle of the biggest argument we’ve ever had?”

“I guess I am.” Derek said, laughing sadly. “I had this whole idea in my head of how it was gonna go, I was gonna take you to this hill that overlooks the city, and at night you can see the lights shining for miles. I had a playlist in my car of all the songs that reminded me of you, and I was gonna ask you to dance with me right out there, on that hill.”

“Like that one time we got lost.” Emily said. “We stopped in that vacant parking lot to try and fix the GPS and that Springsteen song came on and I begged you to get out of the car and dance with me.”

“We spun around in the headlights.” Derek said. “That was the night I knew I had to marry you. I thought about it a lot. I still do. I was gonna recreate it, recreate that feeling we had that night, then I was going to get down on one knee and ask you for forever.”

“That’s-“ Emily sighed. “That’s beautiful, and I would have said yes in a heartbeat.”

“Then say yes  _ now. _ ” He said. “I know we’ve still got issues, we can work ‘em out. But if you still feel the way that you felt that night, say you’ll marry me. And I’ll follow you wherever you go, to the ends of the earth if I have to, just say that you still want me there with you.”

“How can I ask that of you?” Emily said. “To give all this up? For a future full of maybes and what-ifs?”

“The future is uncertain with or without you.” Derek said. “What I  _ do  _ know is that I’d rather face the unknown with you any way you’ll let me.”

It was only a moment that passed, but it felt like a century as he waited for her to say something,  _ anything,  _ whether she crushed his dreams or made them all come true. Derek held his breath as Emily took a shaky one herself, brown eyes staring into his.

“Okay.” She said. “Okay, yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Derek’s heart felt like it stopped. “You serious?”

“I am.” She said. “If you love me enough to do all of this, to still fight for me and for us when I’ve given you  _ no  _ reason to stay, how could I not?”

Derek’s face broke into a grin and his heart soared. Tears were spilling down Emily’s cheeks as she pulled him in for a kiss, deep and slow and full of need. Derek chuckled against her mouth.

“Oh I love you, Emily Prentiss.” He said. “I think I’ll love you my whole life.”

“I love you too.” She said. “Wait, what are we gonna do about London? I’ve all but accepted the offer.”

“Then I guess I’m going to London with you.” He said with a laugh. “London, Hong Kong, Mars, it doesn’t matter. All I want is to be wherever you are.”

“I’m gonna be your wife.” She said. “I’m gonna be  _ married  _ to you. That’s gonna take some getting used to. Being Emily Morgan.”

“You don’t have to change your name, princess.”

“I want to.” She said. “Derek, you’re willing to move to another  _ country  _ for me. I think I can change my name to reflect the love that I have for you.”

Derek felt his heart thump in his chest and he knew that he was hers forever. He felt lost and found all at once, and he fell a little bit more in love with her. He kissed her over and over again, getting lost in the taste of her mouth on his. He got to have this forever.

“When do you wanna do it?” He asked. “Do you want like a big wedding or-?”

“I wanna do it before we leave.” She breathed against him. “I want all our friends there and I don’t want to wait to be married to you. We’ve lost enough time as it is, the past couple of years.”

Derek grinned. “Okay, let’s do it.” He said. “Let’s get married. We can set up a date tomorrow.”

“I love you.” She said.

“I love you too.” He replied.

  
  


Their wedding was a small affair. The entire team was there, Derek paid to have his mother and sisters flown out on such short notice. Emily refused to wear white and Derek turned in his resignation at the BAU, though it was merely a formality. Hotch had known from the minute he found out that Emily was leaving that he was losing Derek too, and though it was sad, no one could begrudge the pair for finding their happiness in one another. Then they were off to London to begin again.

Two years on, after another loss and a couple of surgeries to try and fix the damage done to Emily’s body by Ian Doyle, Derek Morgan rocked their newborn baby girl to sleep in his arms. She had his eyes and Emily’s nose, and her complexion was somewhere in between his darker one and Emily’s fairer one. She was a perfect blend of them. Emily smiled from where she sat up in bed.

“I promise I won’t always be such a deadbeat.” She said jokingly. “I’m just afraid I’m gonna drop her with all of the pain meds they put me on.”

“Don’t you worry about a thing.” Derek said. “Your job right now is to recover from that c-section and get healthy. You lost a lot of blood, you’re not as strong as you would be normally.”

He looked at her sadly. The pregnancy had been rough, even with everything they had done to try and make it go as smoothly as possible. Emily had been on bed rest since week twenty-five, working from home as much as she could and they had depleted their savings so Derek, who had also gotten a job at Interpol, could stay with her in case something happened. She had needed two transfusions and had nearly bled out on the operating table anyway. It had been the worst moment of his life, thinking that he was going to lose her again for real this time. But she had made it, and Vanessa Leigh Morgan was seven pounds of absolute perfection, mewling softly against her mother’s chest as soon as it was safe for her to do so, rooting around for the nourishment she instinctively knew that her mother could provide. Now the infant gazed up at Derek, little eyes growing heavier as he rocked her to sleep. He brought her over to the bed, and Emily leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Then she looked at Derek and touched his arm.

“Hey.” She said softly. “I’m okay. We’re okay.”

“I know.” He said. “I just never knew that kind of love until that day, or that kind of fear.”

“We made it, Derek.” Emily said. “We made it and now it’s just us. You, me, and Vanessa.”

Derek smiled. “I sure do love you, Mrs. Morgan.”

“I love you too, Mr. Morgan.” Emily said. “And I love you, Miss Vanessa Morgan.”

Emily leaned over again and kissed her daughter on her chubby brown cheeks. Vanessa made a sort of grumbling noise, her tiny eyes shut tight, and nuzzled into her mother’s face with her own. Derek felt as though his heart would burst, and though he knew he should put his daughter down in her bassinet and try to sleep before her night feeding, which would come all too soon, he lingered by his wife’s side, their baby in his arms. They stayed like that a moment longer, wrapped in a bubble of happiness and love. After Doyle, Derek had thought that his family was gone forever. Now he had them, and he was determined to love and keep them forever.


End file.
